Memetics (Part 1)

New ideas are constantly being invented and talked about in the world; some of them catch on, and spread, and spawn entire subcultures and political movements. Given that ideas vary, replicate themselves (from mind to mind, by means of speech or writing), and moreover, aren’t equally good at replicating themselves, it can be useful to think of the spread of ideas as an evolutionary process. This is the study of memetics: the winning ideas are not necessarily the ones that are true or useful, but rather the ones that are better at replicating themselves.

(You might ask, “well, cool, but why should we care about memetics?” For my pitch on that, scroll down to the section “Why care about memetics” at the end of this piece.)

There’s a lot to talk about here. I’d like to start by clarifying what we’re talking about. The pitch says we’re talking about ideas, but that’s vague — what is an idea, exactly? Actually, we should be talking about memes.

Memes

What do these phenomenon have in common? They are all packets of cultural information — ideas, images, pieces of text or music, or behaviors — that can be copied. Let’s call them “memes”.

A meme is any information that can be copied by others in some way.

Memes are the basic units of cultural transmission: ideas, pieces of information, behaviors that spreads from person to person.

Examples of memes: ideas, stories, ideologies, jokes, narratives, brands, identities, habits, practices.²

Some of these things are “bigger” than others. An ideology consists of many interrelated ideas (memes), whereas an image macro is basically one thing that can’t be decomposed. Let’s call these bigger things meme-complexes, or “memeplexes.”

A memeplex is a collection of related, mutually supportive memes that form a belief system.

Memes are replicators

Memes³ are replicators. When you share an internet meme with a friend or repost it on X, the meme is replicating. Two young men ask you if you have a moment to talk about Jesus — the meme[plex] is trying to replicate.

Which brings us to a very important fact:

Memes use humans to replicate.

Memes don’t always replicate perfectly. You hear a joke, and accidentally change some details when you retell it. You make some modifications to the image macro before you repost it. A charismatic young man has a different spin on the Bible and founds his own church.

So a meme replicates imperfectly, and now there are two very slightly different memes out there. Both are trying to replicate. What happens? If your mis-telling of joke is funnier, then that version of the joke is more likely to be retold. If your modification to the image macro makes people go “eh, cool” without actually reposting, then that version of the image macro won’t spread.

In other words:

Memes mutate and are subject to natural selection.

Memes evolve.

Memes that are better at replicating and staying around will be the ones that replicate and stay around more. This might sound trivial but it’s very important. It means that memes that are good at replicating and staying around are greatly over-represented in the memes we encounter. Ideologies that are good at replicating themselves tend to do very well in this world. In the next section, we’ll explore how this different this view is from views that instead focus on the truth or usefulness of ideologies.

Why do people believe things?

There’s a whole host of theories about why people believe things on this website. Indeed, it’s a central question in the development of “the art of thinking in ways that result in accurate beliefs and good decisions.”

(Reminder: all models are wrong, but some are useful. These are frameworks.)

Consider this view:

Human beliefs are basically adaptive. People believe things because they are useful.

Practical knowledge is straightforwardly useful. More abstract science is not useful for most people, which is why they don’t really believe in it. Religion gives people hope, peace, and makes them feel good; that’s a big reason why so many people are religious. In the marketplace of ideas, the most useful ideas win.

The other main thing that makes beliefs useful is their social implications. People believe things that their tribe believes, because it marks them as part of the in-group. In general, when asking why someone has a certain belief, don’t ask “why do they think this is true?”; instead, ask “why does it benefit them socially to believe this?”.

And this view:

People believe things because they seem true; people have reasons for their beliefs. To a first approximation, they can explain why they believe things and are basically trying to be rational. In the marketplace of ideas, the truth usually eventually wins (though the marketplace is usually not a free market!).

People believe untrue things mainly because reasoning is really hard. There’s a whole host of cognitive biases that lead people to reason poorly.

Why are people religious? Well, there are compelling arguments as to why God exists! While these arguments might be wrong, they are wrong in ways that can be hard to see. If one is brought up religious, the Bayesian math comes down on the side of religion until a LOT of evidence is presented for the other side. Plus, religion provides answers for deep questions. Until the late 20th century, it was difficult to explain most of the world without religion.

(Note: the question we should probably be asking is “why do most people believe most of the things they believe?”, but that lead me to ugly sentences with an annoying amount of “mosts”. I’ve stuck with the punchier, non-”most” question, but the discussion in this section generalizes.)

There are more sophisticated views that build of these. One might take the first view and add that map-territory correspondence or “truthiness” makes a belief useful. Or one might basically combine the views and replace “true” and “useful” with “useful, probably because of truthiness”. Or one might say that both usefulness and truth motivate belief, and sometimes they conflict, and people vary in how useful vs truth oriented they are. Etc.

One other thing: I’ve been using the word “belief” in this section, but it is not exactly the right word. It’s too narrow; it’s weird to apply “beliefs” to behaviors — not eating meat; posting image macros on twitter — or many types of knowledge — knowing how to make and use a wheel; arithmetic. So why have I been using “belief”? Well, firstly it’s a question all of us have asked ourselves before; secondly, if I ask the question the way I want to ask it — “why do people have the memes they do?” — I’m imposing the memetics framework onto the question itself.

With that said, I’d like to focus in on a specific kind of thing one can believe — ideology. Actually, we usually say “believe in” with regards to ideology. (I told you “belief” is not the right word! Plus some people eschew belief altogether and talk about credence.)

The question is:

Why do people believe in the ideologies they do?

The “adaptive” view of human belief says:

People believe in an ideology because believing in it is useful for them. Ideologies are useful because they contain practical knowledge and/or frameworks for understanding and affecting the world.

Most religions offer decent norms in areas like diet, sex, and family life. It’s hard, and historically was extremely hard, to figure out norms from first principles. Not all parts of the ideology are necessarily beneficial — often most parts are useless and some parts are actively harmful — but the good outweighs the bad.

Political ideologies contain frameworks that are useful for understanding and changing the world. People that want to change the world (which is most people!) get utility from their ideologies. For one, political ideologies suggest an actionable plan: Neoliberalism suggests change through free markets; Marxism suggests change through revolution and class consciousness.

Sometimes, the utility in an ideology is mostly or purely social. Ideologies often form the basis of tribes/in-groups; if you want to be part of the tribe, you best believe in the ideology! Some ideologies have a good reputation, so people can benefit by being seen as a believer in that ideology.

The “truth” view of human belief says:

People believe in an ideology because they think it’s true. Generally, the less wrong an ideology is, the more likely people are to believe it. Ideologies that are incoherent get torn down both by arguments and evidence from the real world, although cognitive biases make this process less than perfect.

Most people believe in ideologies that are approximately coherent; belief in obviously incoherent ideologies doesn’t last long. Ideological differences are usually due to axiomatic or value differences rather than one ideology being definitively “wrong”. Indeed, ideologies often blossom from a person’s or people’s fundamental values or axiomatic beliefs; there is a compelling chain of logic that binds it all together.

In cases where ideologies make falsifiable predictions, empirical evidence can and does sway people’s belief. Communism was popular among great minds in the early twentieth century because it seemed pretty convincing at the time. It had good internal coherence and people would be convinced by argument to believe in it. After communism was tried and failed, some previous proponents lost their belief, and it became much less popular.

Contrast these views with what I’ll call the memetic view of belief:

People believe in an ideology because that ideology is good at reproducing and surviving; it’s good at spreading itself and convincing people to believe in it.

Being useful (or true) is one aspect of an ideology that makes people believe in it and spread it, but it is far from the only one. Other things are more important, like how much the ideology promotes proselytizing or having kids. People often believe in an ideology because of its emotional impact or appeal to tribal instincts, rather than because of its usefulness or (appearance of) truth.

People are Christians because their parents were Christian; or missionaries or friendly community members keep on talking to them about how great God is; or they’re really freaking scared of going to hell. People believed in Fascism because Fascism promotes power-seeking — Facists gained power and influence — and its in group-outgroup, “us vs them” view of the world got their blood boiling.

Or, here’s a different take on the memetic view, which is actually comes from a LW post “Not All Beliefs Are Created Equal: Diagnosing Toxic Ideologies”:

The ideologies we encounter most frequently in daily life are not random—they are the most successful survivors of a memetic selection process. Just as in evolutionary biology, only the most adaptable and virulent ideologies persist. These are the belief systems that best fulfill the structural criteria outlined above: they provide compelling psychological rewards, resist falsification, spread efficiently through media, and simplify reality into manageable heuristics.

Identity politics, for instance, dominates much of the cultural discourse not because it is the most rational or empirically accurate framework, but because it adheres exceptionally well to the ideological template. It offers adherents moral certainty and a sense of righteous purpose, effectively shields itself from criticism through accusations of privilege or bias, spreads through emotionally resonant slogans and memes, and simplifies complex social phenomena into binary narratives. Its success reflects not inherent truth but memetic efficiency.

This same principle explains the persistence of other powerful ideologies. Those that fail to resonate emotionally, that cannot defend themselves from criticism, or that require too much cognitive effort to understand or explain, tend to fade or remain niche. The dominant ideologies are not necessarily those with the best ideas—they are those with the best survival strategies.

Christianity and Islam: A Very Short Case Study

Why did Christianity take over the world? Why are Christianity and Islam by far the world’s biggest religions?

Because Christianity and Islam proselytize. (Unlike almost every other religion!)

Of course, it’s more complicated than this. There have many proselytizing cults over the years that haven’t made it to “religion” status. Mostly they’ve died out entirely, though some stay around for a while but never make it big. You could say that they failed to go viral.)

Okay, so what else besides proselytization? Christianity and Islam are pro-natalist.

That’s 95% of it. If you tell your adherents to spread you, and you convince them to have a lot of kids and spread you to their kids, then you’re going to spread! What about the other 5%? Well, it’s very fascinating, and I hope to write a whole post on the memetic properties of Christianity; but for today’s purposes, I’m going to keep things short and simple.

Why care about memetics?

Memetics helps us understand why people believe the things they do. It explains why ideologies are the way they are. It gives us the tools to predict if an ideology will be successful. You cannot understand religion without memetics. Memetics helps us understand culture.⁴ You cannot understand culture without memetics. Memetics helps us understand social movements, fads, cults, politics. You cannot understand politics without memetics.

Memetics provides us with a model of human behavior that contrasts with the model that economics provides. Economics understands human behavior through incentives and rational behavior. In areas where economic thinking fails (why do people believe things and act in ways that are bad for them?), Memetics offers answers. Similarly, memetics offers a way to understand the human mind that’s different from psychology.

The modern world is really, really, complicated. There are systems (entities, even) that dominate the world and our lives that are difficult to understand and control: culture, the economy, politics, corporations, social change. Memetics helps us understand these things.

And lastly, aren’t you just curious? What are ideas? How are ideological movements so freaking powerful? There’s a whole ‘nother world of entities out there, entities that are literally part of our mind, that we use to think and perceive the world, and science hasn’t even noticed them!⁵ These entities are abstract in some sense and invisible and nonphysical. Or wait, are they invisible and nonphysical? What should our ontology be here?

I’ve made some strong claims here about what memetics can do, I know. And perhaps you found the whole idea of calling memes “entities” to be ridiculous. That’s okay. We’ll get more into that in the next posts. Memetics is a rich, absurdly understudied field. I’ve been studying it for years and am excited to finally present what I’ve found in this sequence.

Until next time.

Moloch whose name is the Mind!⁶⁷

I’m quoting this directly from someone else. Their explanation of memetics is excellent, so I’m going to copy it. Thank you UnremediatedGenderSpace! ↩
https://wearehostsformemes.com/ ↩
One can replace “meme” with “memeplex” in this section and it all holds. ↩
Look around — we do not understand cultural phenomenon! ↩
Why isn’t memetics a field of science? I’ll dig into that in a future post. ↩
This is a line from Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl, accessible at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl ↩
(Howl is actually about memetics, although Ginsberg didn’t have the vocabulary to say so.) ↩

Memetics